Moving to Chiago Suburbs in Summer

[WildWestDude]

For the best schools around and nicely priced homes check out the town of Munster just over the border in Indiana. The high school is often rated #1 in the state. Town is clean, safe and an easy commute to Chicago.
Also overall cost of living and taxes are lower in Indiana.

about the schools:

http://www.publicschoolreview.com/sc...chool_id/28397


about the city:

//www.city-data.com/city/Munster-Indiana.html

[WildWestDude]

To add to above: Munster has probably the most expensive homes in the NW Indiana area, but still reasonable compared to other IL suburbs (excluding ghetto burbs)

[NKR]

Thanks for the info. I am totally stressed out wondering how I am going to find both ( school and home) knowing that I am going from #1 school district to don't know what. My husband will be working in the northbrook area and I am looking at places near it that has good schools and homes and diverse.
New Trier seems to be one of my choices in terms of schools. Any advice ...

[Paige65]

If your husband is going to be working in Northbrook, I would look at the following school districts:

New Trier
Highland Park
Deerfield
Stevenson

All of these school districts are top notch. I'm sure you are coming from a superb high school, but be assured that each of these schools are very competitive and have extensive opportunities for bright students. Talk to the counselors at these schools and ask them about their college admission rates to top tier universities around the country and I'm sure you won't be disappointed in what you hear.

Good luck!

[NKR]

Thanks for the info. Will look at them.

[imsa_alumnus314]

Originally Posted by InformedConsent

IMSA is residential only, day students are not allowed. Many students do well there, but I personally know several families who were dissatisfied with the way the students are used as guinea pigs for education research. Some of the outcomes weren't very good, and IMSA had no qualms about sacrificing some of the students' educations for the sake of establishing results to publish.

IMSA is extremely similar to Thomas Jefferson, and is probably the closest thing to it in the country. I was very happy with my experience there and was extremely well-prepared, but I will try to offer an honest perspective of IMSA's strengths and weaknesses.

As for the educational experimentation, I don't think it took away from the experience. One of the fundamental principles of the school is that learning is discovery-based. In the sophomore classes, I think sometimes this discovery-based emphasis may be unnecessary and over-emphasized. Things may have changed, but I know some people weren't happy with the Integrated Science Sequence (for sophomores,) but this was optional. In integrated science, there was no divisions between the different scientific disciplines and you just explored different projects. You could choose the more traditional track with sophomore chemistry and sophomore physics, though. Sophomore physics was more traditional, although whenever possible they tried to make so we discovered a physical law in lab rather than just telling us. Sophomore chemistry was harder for me to judge. I already had an outstanding background in chemistry, so the principles we were "discovering" I already knew. They ended up moving me to thermodynamics so I only spent a semester in sophomore chem.

However, the math investigations sequence for sophomores is outstanding. It's something that you won't see anywhere else and really provides a foundation for real college-level mathematics (beyond calculus.) It's hard to describe. One of the exercises that I remember in the first couple days of imsa was that we calculated differences for consecutive numbers in a sequence. It was done to lay the groundwork of our intuition for derivatives. The Math Investigations Sequence is one of the educational experiments that really was a home run.

Junior year there is Advanced Chemistry and or Calc-based physics. These are very traditional and similar to AP classes, although again they try to do interesting things with the lab. (In fact, the Dr. Workman you cited was an outstanding teacher of physics.) They used Zumdahl's college textbook for chemistry (Prof. Zumdahl taught at U. of Illinois) and they used the classic Halliday/Resnick textbook for chemistry. The calculus sequence also uses a classic textbook (except for multi-variable calculus, which had no textbook.)

In addition, there are great science electives like Organic chemistry, biochemistry, cell biology, microbiology, number theory, abstract algebra, advanced problem solving, and many more. There is also a mentorship program to do research. I didn't talk about the humanities classes, but they are outstanding as well. Many are taught by former college professors.

So I would highly recommend IMSA to star students out there. I wouldn't be scared off by the educational laboratory emphasis, although I wouldn't recommend the integrated science option. Changes to curriculum are generally done to foster critical thinking, and there is so much content that even if there are a few "failed" experiments you still end up learning far more than at another school. (One example of an educational experiment was to keep a "thinking journal" in organic chemistry. We tried to tackle a research problem as a researcher might. I'm not sure how useful it was to me. However, we also ended up covering the equivalent of a semester of organic chemistry at MIT in the year-long course at imsa, so even if the thinking journal wasn't that useful we still learned a lot.)

Also, some more traditional schools to check out: New Trier, Stevenson, Naperville North, Northside College Prep. The last one is new and I don't know much about it, but you can't go wrong with the first three. IMSA is only a 3-year school (sophomore to senior,) so regardless of whether you want to go to IMSA you need to find a school for the freshman year of high school.